On the Brink

Gritty near-future sci-fi

076

A genie who gained awareness in an illegal mining cloning station. He has only rudimentary knowledge of his surroundings.

Description:

Bio:

076 is a genie, somehow birthed in a mining operation’s illegal clone production facility. More amazing than his birth was the fact that he wasn’t detected during the gestation process and terminated. He excelled in the highly focused miner training program, and immediately upon reaching maturity he was selected for a mining operation.

076 piled into the transport shuttle along with his brothers and settled into a seat. He welcomed the harness’s embrace and settled into the boring routine of travel—wake, drink, eat, excrete, urinate sleep . . . over and over again. And always, he felt so alone, even though he was surrounded by two dozen other miners. All blank-eyed. All focused on their mining training.

Aside from the boredom, everything was going along fine. Then the shuttle began its descent. And 076 panicked. And in his panic, he reached out and touched the pilots’ minds, sharing his blind panic with them.

The shuttle entered a wild, uncontrolled descent. Eventually, it crashed. Or something. And 076 found himself the sole survivor.